It was a rainy morning. He looked out the window over the old city and saw the dark clouds rolling in from the ocean. He felt the cool breeze across his body. He turned quietly and watched her sleeping. The sheet rose and fell with each of her breaths. He was glad she was finally resting. "Is she dreaming of a time or a place or of the sea or of me?," he wondered.
Yesterday, they thought they would not see the light of the new day. There was a cut across her cheek, a rip in her jeans and holes in her shoes as they struggled hand in hand across the countryside. They arrived at the hotel in the night. He pulled off her worn and tattered clothes and washed the dirt and blood from her body. He held her and tried to soothe the chaos around and inside of them. He remembered the look of fearlessness and hopefulness that were in her eyes as they journeyed together, a look that comforted him now as he watched her sleep.
He laid down beside her. The curves of her body reminded him of the gently rolling hills below the mountains where he lived as a boy. She was beautiful like that land, like the flowers he found as he roamed the countryside, like the soil he walked over barefooted as his grandfather turned the earth with a donkey and plow, like the leaves of the trees that sparkled green after the rains of the rainy season. He moved close to her until he felt the breathing of her breath upon his face. He kissed her lips tenderly.
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